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A promotion by a local company will award the first 5 people in line with free phones on Friday morning (Published Friday, Jan 17, 2014)

(NECN: Alysha Palumbo - Boston) - iPhone junkies are lined up and waiting at the Apple Store on Boylston Street in Boston so they can be one of the first people in the country to get their hands on the iPhone 5.

“I just love being new and up to date," said Bentley MBA student John Morrissey. "I like being first, I like having the newest and the best thing the time it comes out.”

John Morrissey of Belmont will be the first get the new smartphone at the Boston store, and he won’t have to pay a dime thanks to a promotion by a local company called Gazelle.

Gazelle Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Welch said, “An Apple iPhone launch is basically like Black Friday for us— very exciting for Gazelle.com, which is a trade-in site for consumer electronics.”

Gazelle is paying for the new phones for the first five people in line at the Apple Stores in Boston and in New York City.

Those spots were filled in New York by Monday.

Ky Jensen Stewart of Brooklyn, N.Y., said, “So I just went down there and started camping out. A couple days in, I met one of the people, Katie from Gazelle, who said that there’s no one in line up in Boston.”

Stewart and a friend hopped on a bus to try to get the free phones here, but Morrissey wasn’t having it.

Morrissey said, “They said two kids from New York were going to come down to skip the line there because there was no line here. I wasn’t going to let anyone from New York beat me.”

He grabbed his mom and got in line.

She’s happy to get the free phone, but even happier to spend time with her son.

Cheryl Morrissey said, “Just to have five minutes to sit down, when he’s in school … I don’t see him. He’s 22 and on the run, but I had a full 24-plus hours to talk to him, so that’s about my fill for the year.”

Also in line are app developers from Raizlabs, who are creating an app while waiting in line.

Developer Ben Johnson said, “We’re going to get it, unbox it and make sure our app works on it right when it’s ready.”

And many are hoping that when the doors open on Friday morning, this line moves quickly.

Boston Conservatory student Adam Pol said, “I know I have class at 9 a.m. and the store opens at 8, so we’ll see how that works out.”